Freshdesk acquires social recommendation platform Frilp

Freshdesk acquires social recommendation platform Frilp

Freshdesk, which provides a SaaS-based customer support platform for enterprises, has acquired social recommendations platform Frilp.

Once integrated into its offering, Freshdesk can offer Frilp as a value addition to its customers who can in turn enhance interaction with their customers with the app. Freshdesk expects this to lend it an edge over competitors such as Zendesk, GrooveHQ and Helpscout.

Freshdesk, which is backed by Tiger Global Management, says the deal will not only help its customers talk to each other but even crowd-source solutions, leveraging Frilp's ability to provide technology­ driven intelligence, as per a press statement.

The financials of the deal are not disclosed.

"The customer service landscape and overall needs of our customers are rapidly changing as they integrate social and mobile support capabilities into their customer programmes. Providing our customers with the tools they need to keep their customers happy is what is driving Freshdesk's growth and that is why we are excited about integrating Frilp's recommendation engine and natural language processing technology into our current offering," said Freshdesk's CEO Girish Mathrubootham.

It also raised a Series E funding round worth $50 million from Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Google Capital.

"We are excited to join hands with Freshdesk, where we will move faster towards our goal of enabling contextual conversations and recommendations to deliver a positive impact on a large scale," said Shyam Anandaraman, CEO of Frilp.

"With the explosion of instant messaging platforms, on­ demand social recommendations and peer­-to- peer customer conversations is becoming the norm. With Freshdesk and Frilp coming together, it will enable businesses and their customers to connect with each other, their support agents and sales reps in a much better way. This will not only provide a delightful customer experience but help people save time, money, and effort," he added.

San Francisco-based Freshdesk was founded in 2012 by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy. Currently, it has over 50,000 clients, including 3M, Verizon Wireless, Honda, Hugo Boss, University of Pennsylvania and Petronas.

Freshdesk claims to have doubled its client base in the past one year, by adding clients such as Avast Antivirus and Brazil-based cosmetic giant O Boticario. Mathrubootham and Krishnasamy worked with Zoho Corporation before founding Freshdesk.

Frilp, which stands for 'friends help', is a P2P social recommendation platform founded by Shyam Anandaraman, Senthil Kanthaswamy, Anish Deenadayalan, Raja Jayaraman and Aravind Gopan in 2013. The company was incubated at CIIE (Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship) at IIM Ahmedabad and was part of the Microsoft Ventures Growth Accelerator program.